Your business aviation hot takes, served fresh.

September 16th, 2026 | Season 3 Episode 37 Companion

Good morning and welcome back to the VIP Seat. This week Chris Rocheleau reverses course on NBAA and takes the top job at the airports association instead, Priester Aviation retires the name it was founded under and folds four companies into one brand, new reporting puts OneFlight International's financing and operations under a microscope, Flexjet opens a $34 million private terminal at Farnborough, and a federal appeals court leaves a whistleblower ruling against Nicholas Air in place. Sit back, buckle up, and let's take off.

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The Scoop: Airports Council International-North America has named Christopher J. "Chris" Rocheleau as its next president and CEO, with a start date of October 5, according to AIN and AVweb. Rocheleau spent more than two decades at the FAA before joining NBAA as chief operating officer in 2022. He returned to the FAA in January 2025 as acting administrator and led the agency in the period following the midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, then stayed on as deputy administrator after Bryan Bedford was confirmed as administrator in July 2025. He left the FAA in July and had returned to NBAA as chief operating officer in August, weeks before the ACI-NA announcement. He succeeds Kevin Burke, who is stepping down after nearly 13 years and will remain CEO emeritus through 2026. ACI-NA represents commercial service airports in the United States and Canada.

Our Take: Two weeks ago we said his return to NBAA was good news for the association's bench. Consider this the UNO reverse card.

Start with the obvious, which is that this is a bigger platform and a bigger job, and we would not have blinked at it either.

For NBAA it is a real loss on the lobbying bench. For the rest of us, the question is whether it nets out positive, and our read is yes with an asterisk. ACI-NA's membership is commercial service airports, not the general aviation fields where most of us keep airplanes, so business aviation's ask here runs indirectly. But the person at the top now has two decades inside the FAA and four years inside business aviation, and that background tends to show up when airport policy gets written.

What we would love to see him take a swing at: FBO special event fees. Throw us a bone, Chris. What we are watching: whether business aviation gets an actual seat at that table?

Read More: AIN

The Scoop: George J. Priester Aviation announced on August 27 that it is retiring the name it has carried since its founding, consolidating Mayo Aviation, Hill Private Aviation and Omni Private Aviation under a single brand, Priester Aviation, according to GlobalAir.com. Elite Jets and MaxAir, the charter operators that joined in March, keep their own names and add a Priester Company descriptor alongside them. CEO Brent Moldowan framed the change as the visible piece of a longer internal effort, saying clients will experience "One Priester" across their entire aviation journey. The rebrand caps a run of growth. The March addition of Elite Jets and MaxAir brought 17 aircraft into the fold, including Phenom 300s, a Legacy 500, Gulfstream G200s and a Gulfstream GV. On August 11, sixteen days before the rebrand, Priester added six more: a Bombardier Global 6000, a Global XRS and a Gulfstream G280 going onto the company's Part 135 certificate, plus two Challenger 604s and a Pilatus PC-12 under Part 91. That puts the managed fleet at nearly 100 aircraft. Priester holds ARGUS Platinum, Wyvern registration and Air Charter Safety Foundation certification across the combined organization.

Our Take: Letting an acquired name ride for a while helps an acquired team feel like a team rather than an absorbed asset, and that counts for something in a business where the people are the product.

But the runway for that runs out. Once the back office is unified, the sub-brands are just a phone number problem. Do I call Mayo, or Hill, or Elite, or MaxAir, or Priester? One roof, one number, one standard.

The wider story is that aircraft management has had a busy couple of years on the M&A side, and we think that is good! It gives small and midsize management companies a credible exit path they did not reliably have, particularly the high-quality ones that have been in the market for decades.

The hard part was never the logo. It is the integration. Merging Part 135 certificates puts the FAA into your org chart alongside seniority lists and training standards that all have to be reconciled. Management contracts are not especially sticky either, so every owner is effectively a re-sale. Solairus has described its Clay Lacy integration as progressing well, with a large majority of the managed fleet moved across, and that kind of retention takes an enormous amount of proactive customer work. Priester has run this play before, at speed, which is the best predictor we have.

Read More: GlobalAir.com

The Scoop: Private Jet Card Comparisons published a detailed recap this week of its reporting on Denver-based jet card broker OneFlight International. Per that account, and consistent with the company's own January announcement, OneFlight reported $232 million in total revenue for 2025, including flight revenue and membership sales, up from $122 million in 2024, a 90 percent year-over-year increase, on 16,522 flight hours. The publication reported that the company had been targeting roughly $350 million this year. It also described a future receipts agreement carrying a stated purchase price of about $1.65 million, less fees and amounts applied to existing obligations, in exchange for approximately $2.29 million in future receipts. The report said the company has characterized its card programs as loss leaders and is scaling back celebrity ambassador and brand-building spend, and that some operators have asked for payment ahead of flights. It also reported that a former chief financial officer has been held in federal immigration detention since September 3, and that the company's chief executive said that matter is unrelated to OneFlight. In late August, the company emailed clients imposing a 35 percent surcharge, describing it as a response to extraordinary economic pressures affecting private aviation, then rescinded it hours later. None of the matters described have been adjudicated.

Our Take: The disclosure first, because it matters. This is us commenting on Doug Gollan's reporting. He did the legwork, he stuck to what he could actually gather. What follows is our context and opinion layered on top of that, not independent findings of our own, and we are not alleging wrongdoing by any person or company.

Now the number nobody should skim past. Factoring is a perfectly normal instrument. Trucking companies live on it, because you pay for fuel, drivers and parking on day one and do not get paid until day 30 or day 45, so you buy the gap. Pricing varies enormously with the risk profile, and for a business with thousands of small invoices it is simply the cost of doing business. But run the reported figures here: roughly $640,000 in cost to pull forward about $1.65 million. Annualize that against a short receivables window and the implied rate is... Significant.

Which raises the obvious follow-on. Why would a business sitting on prepaid jet card deposits need to sell receivables at all? The answer is deferred liability, and deferred liability is the thing that sneaks up. It also makes us look harder at the headline number. Is $232 million cards sold, or flights flown? Those are different, and recognized revenue and deferred liability sit in different places on the balance sheet for a reason.

On the loss-leader strategy, we will repeat what we said last week. We do not like it. Bring a customer in at a price that covers your cost of doing business and earn the relationship from there. This is not an airline locking up every slot at a hub. There is no structural moat waiting at the end of the discount.

PJCC reported last night that OneFlight is pausing operations for 30 days…showing a serious turn in this story. Stay tuned.

Read More: Private Jet Card Comparisons

The Scoop: Flexjet announced on September 10 the opening of its first dedicated European terminal at Farnborough Airport near London, according to GlobalAir.com and AIN. The 22,583-square-foot facility, reported at a cost of $34 million, includes private lounges, meeting spaces, dedicated security and immigration processing, a Tactical Control Centre and a full-size replica Gulfstream G700 cabin. It doubles as Flexjet's European headquarters and connects to the company's other infrastructure at Farnborough, including a recently opened maintenance facility. Unlike a traditional FBO or a shared lounge, the terminal is reserved exclusively for Flexjet customers. AIN reported that the building also houses training and operations centers.

Our Take: Disclosure up front. Flexjet invited us to the opening and we were there as their guests.

What struck us on the ground was the Red Label academy sitting inside the building, arranged so owners can watch flight attendant training the way you watch a kitchen from a chef's table. That is a confident thing to do. Most operations would rather you never see how the sausage gets made.

On the strategic read, this is an expansion move rather than an exploratory one. Europe is not the frontier. The established players are already at Farnborough, and VistaJet remains the dominant European name. What a dedicated terminal actually buys Flexjet is everything east of Farnborough, which is where the growth conversation has moved.

Call it what it is, too. It is an FBO. A very nice one, with its own security and immigration and a single customer base, but an FBO.

Read More: AIN

The Scoop: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied a petition seeking to set aside a Department of Labor whistleblower decision in favor of a former captain-in-training at Nicholas Air, according to AVweb. The petition was brought by Corr Flight S., which employs personnel for Nicholas Air. The underlying case dates to 2019, when the pilot, serving as an observer on a flight, reported that a captain left the cockpit while the aircraft was at altitude and also raised concerns about required oxygen mask use. He later declined to continue training on passenger flights with that captain and told management he considered him unsafe. The company declined to assign a different instructor and placed him on unpaid leave. An administrative law judge found that the safety report and the refusal were protected activity under AIR21, the federal aviation whistleblower statute, and that the protected activity contributed to the suspension. The Labor Department's Administrative Review Board upheld that ruling in December 2024, awarding roughly $2,700 in back pay for a 15-day suspension, plus interest, attorney fees and costs. His subsequent termination was not before the Fifth Circuit. An administrative law judge had found that although the protected activity contributed to the firing, the company proved it would have terminated him regardless after he did not sign an agreement for third-party simulator training, and that finding was not appealed.

Our Take: Start with the part most people get wrong. AIR21 reaches a much wider group than flight crew. It covers employees of air carriers and their contractors and subcontractors, and it extends into the manufacturing side as well.

The tension worth sitting with is the arithmetic. Roughly $2,700 and a suspension reversed, seven years later, against having your name attached to a whistleblower case in an industry this small.

We would far rather live in the world where the protection exists and the award is small than the one where it does not exist at all. But an incentive structure this lopsided is not doing the job it was designed to do.

Read More: AVweb

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Photographed Next To, Not Flown In

The find of the week came by way of Bizav Memes, who deserves the credit The setup is an artist posting a very confident photo shoot in front of a private jet. The tells arrived fast. The cabin door is closed, which is not how you look when you have just stepped off.

If It’s Not Working, Go Around

Jessie brought the most immature item in the history of this segment: ‘Landing an airplane is like a fart, if you have to force it, it’s probably shit’. The landing, so to speak, was an actual safety point. When the approach is not working, Go around. Nobody has ever been fired for a second attempt, and the alternative has a habit of turning up in an NTSB report.

Most immature Mile High Madness to date. You are welcome.

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Jessie's Links:
Private Aviation Safety Alliance
FlyVizor
LinkedIn

Preston's Links:
Prestige Aircraft Finance
Private Jet Insider (Newsletter)
LinkedIn
X (Formerly Known as Twitter)
FastJets

Disclaimer: The VIP Seat Weekly is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Coverage of publicly traded companies reflects the personal opinions of the hosts and does not constitute investment, financial, tax, or legal advice, nor a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. Descriptions of legal proceedings, regulatory matters and unresolved business situations reflect published reports and public records, and are not findings of fact by The VIP Seat, its hosts, or any company named. Nothing here is legal or employment advice for any particular situation. The hosts attended the Flexjet Farnborough terminal opening as invited guests of Flexjet. The hosts are not registered investment advisors and may hold positions in companies discussed. All investments carry risk. Readers should conduct their own research and consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decision.